NaNoWriMo: Day 1 – Reflection & Snippet

Well, I sure thought that I was ready for today. I have been waiting for today for several months now, hoping to tear into my writing with resolve. I did. Sort of. My plan went pretty much according to what I had outlined in yesterday’s post sans the shower part. Preggers was getting ready for work and I wanted to get writing.

The first 561 words came quite easily – they were my longhand warm-up words and I had fun with them. I explored Doris, the elderly lady who helps in the kitchen of the bunker and teaches art to the children once a week. I also met a flirting eighty year old man named Sylvester. Remember, my warm-ups are not in the fantasy world that my real story is set. I am sort of sketching the next project during my warm-ups and using my real writing time for the fantasy story, Wake of Flames.

After my warm-up, things sort of fell apart. The wheels came off. The shit hit the fan.

I was slapped in the face by the fact that I have not outlined the story arc. Hell, I haven’t even thought about it really. I know what I want to happen, but I have no roadmap of how to get from A to B, or where in the shit B even is. I was left scrambling. I was left watching friends blow through a thousand words – then two thousand – then five thousand. One of my acquaintances hit over TWELVE THOUSAND WORDS….TODAY!

I could have given up there. Trust me, it would have been the easiest thing I would have done all day. I thought about it. Why not just chalk it up to another year lost because I didn’t get off on the right foot? I’ve done that in years past. Seriously. If the first few hours didn’t produce three or five thousand words, I wrote it off as failure. I didn’t continue.

That was during the period of my life when I liked to pretend to be a writer. I have talked about this in previous posts, so I won’t go into it again. Needless to say, the allusion that I am writer has been stronger than my commitment to the craft. Well, that changes this year. This blog has, to be completely honest, been nothing more than a ploy to get my ass writing. To commit to the act of writing in one form or another. I am not stopping here. The blog is now the secondary or tertiary act of writing for me. I build a platform. I continue to find my writer’s foundation – the tools, techniques, agenda, and voice that I have worked on amassing for the past several months.

So, today I rang in at 2,903 words. I told myself and my writing buddies, @AuthorClaudiaB @UtahRichie @AuthorLeeFrench that I was going to get to 3,000. I am close enough to be happy, especially since I am writing this post on top of the writing. I have the remainder of the weekend to get another 7,100 words and I will have hit my goal of 10k by the week’s end.

I have already posted this on my Snippets page, but I am going to include an excerpt from today’s writing here as well. It is, in the very nature of NaNoWriMo, unedited and very much a product of pantsing. I hope you enjoy.

November 1st
This was pure pantsing and it created an interesting dichotomy within one of my main characters. Parl is fire. He is fueled by passion and emotion. His twin brother is water. The fact that Parl has sought solace within the realm of water has piqued my interest. I am sure I will explore this more tomorrow.

Deep below, Parl imagined, something stirred. A great, slitherous body of scales and feelers undulating with the currents. He imagined that, had he simply slid off the dock, that the creature would come to greet him. That the creature would would embrace him in taut, wide fins. Parl hoped that the creature would have a jagged, cartilage spear sprouting from its head. He would be lanced, in the heart, and the fire within him would be flooded and extinguished. There would be no smoldering remains. There would be no heat of rage. There would be no burning jealousy. He would be free to live without fear. He might even live without remembering – all reminders of his past left impaled and drowned on the barbed harpoon of the thing under the water.